


safe, so far from heaven

by tetue



Category: Original Work
Genre: Multi, Werewolves, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-28 20:58:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21143111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tetue/pseuds/tetue
Summary: this is why we have werewolves, best beloved





	safe, so far from heaven

"It's me," Ben said, very softly, as he shut the door. Riah sat up, sighing, and tucked the knife back under the sheepskin. 

"So what freaky shit is our host into, anyways?" she asked. 

"It didn't work," he said. The bed was warm and smelled like her; she tucked herself into his shoulder. 

"You? I'm sorry, _you_ couldn't honeypot him?" She bit his shoulder, companionable enough, as she considered the news. "Fuck. You'd tell me if you were dying, right?"

"He knew about Langdon."

"Oh godsdamnit that conniving little chucklefucking shithead." She wiggled closer, brow furrowing. "Fuck this leg, tell me if it's bugging you. What did he know about Langdon?" 

"Sarai Branson killed John Langdon," he said. "I'm an idiot, I froze up, I don't know what else he heard."

"Mm." He'd started to drift off before she spoke, again: "babe, we gotta figure out this fuck's angle."

"It's just like Langdon," he said, and yawned hugely in her ear. "He wants his own army; I'd put money on him looking to fuck up the king in the bay. Maybe force your father into helping him."

"So we go all in," Sarai said, cold and calm. "No. Shut up, listen to me - you and I have been on our own, no place in the world, for years, and now this wizard wants to give us a place? The worst thing is he dies and we have to book it again." Her hand on his wrist signed [no no no], because [lie] was harder. 

"Sarai," he said. Her eyes moved quickly beneath hooded lids; he could catch the basic shape of her plan - not that they had any choice about it. If he had to be talked into it, he'd be talked into it. 

"Langdon was a bastard," she said. "Maybe this wizard isn't a bastard, Ben."

"All wizards are bastards," he said, soft. 

This is the story that Ben told the wizard: 

There was a village in the shadow of a great forest. The village was small, and the villagers died often: winter killed. Wolves killed. Hunger killed. Cold killed. This meant that the villagers never paid as much in taxes as the Lord wanted, and the men muttered in the bitter early months before spring came and brought yams and potatoes and fish. 

After some years of this bullshit -

"Finally! I knew there had to be fire under all that bowing and scraping!"

"What - I meant no offense, lord, I don't -"

"It's the first time I've heard you swear," the wizard said. He looked pleased. 

"Oh," Ben said. He blinked. His lashes lay dark and wet along the line of his cheek. He'd tipped his head back after the wizard had wrapped a hand around his throat, feeling the pulse against his fingertips in a languid rhythm. "I didn't- that's just how you tell it. I can try to -" he frowned, obviously groping for the words. 

"Tell it the way it's meant to be told," the wizard said. 

Ben nodded in acknowledgement, shifted a little closer. He'd pulled his legs in, sitting cross legged now, not kneeling. 

Lot of bullshit. Their lord died, eventually, and his son got wind of the party the village had thrown. Got wind of the effigy they'd burned. 

He doubled the taxes the next year. 

The villagers had a blacksmith. He was shit at swords - why would he know how to make swords? those were for rich men, not ordinary village people - but he could make arrows by the bundle. They drove the lord's men off, the first time. Don't know what the poor fuckers thought it'd do - they already lived in the shadow of the forest. Didn't have nowhere to go, specially with winter coming on. Lord sent the law, next time, with swords and muskets. 

One woman saw her husband fall, her house catch fire, and she figured she was done for any way, so she ran into the forest. The men didn't follow her; they were corralling the kids big enough to work, to bring back to the city. 

The woman put her life in the hands of whatever god might have been paying attention and ran deeper into the forest. She found a cave, sure enough, but she wasn't the first one to lay claim - there was a single wolf, lean and gray, and a wrassle of wolf pups in a rainbow of colors. 

"What the fuck, gods?" the woman asked. Her feet were bleeding. 

"My gods heard me," the wolf told her, "because it's too shitting cold and I am hungry and my milk has dried."

"Mine hasn't," the woman said, real quick, because the wolf reached her shoulder when she stood on all fours and looked like her death. "Let me stay here in your cave, and I will feed your children, for I have no place and no one, now. I ain't got jackshit."

The wolf tasted the woman's tears and knew that she told the truth. She said: "Woman, you stay in this cave and feed my children while I hunt, and I will not eat you tonight." 

The woman did so, and in the morning the wolf returned and saw that her cubs were warm and fed. "I won't kill you today, but tomorrow you had better be gone," she said. 

"Right, fine," the woman said. She walked to the stream to wash her bleeding feet and wrap leaves around them; she chewed pine needles and gathered small branches, and caught three fish. When she came back to the cave the wolf grumbled. 

"These fish are small and soon your men will follow you," she said. 

"I have nothing and no one: I have jack shit," the woman said. "All of mine are dead: let me stay in this cave tonight and give my milk to your cubs, and I will build a fire to warm you."

"Fine," the wolf said. "But tomorrow, when I come back from my hunt, I'll probably eat you."

"That would be stupid as hell," the woman said. "You have cubs and no he-wolf, and it's winter; if we shelter together we will make it through the winter, and then I will leave you and yours." 

The woman and the wolf stayed together and the pups grew fat. The woman pulled the burrs and twigs out of their coats, and the wolf caught rabbits and deer to feed her, and laid at the woman's back in the cold nights, to warm her. The wolf was named after the way of wolves, but the woman called her Luna because she was a daughter of the moon.

In the spring, the wolf's people came to the forest. 

"We will eat this woman, for we have come a long way north and we hunger," the old woman of the pack said. 

The wolf barred the way with her body. "You will not," she said. "I have hunted this woman and she is mine and mine to kill. Get your own." 

"You won't kill our other mother," the biggest of the wolf cubs said, and the oldest wolf of all laughed. 

"A human can't be your mother," she said. "Unless you are dogs, and if you are dogs you are no kin of mine."

"We are no dogs," the she-wolf said, "but this woman is mine and this forest is mine. You will go, and if you will not leave she will set fire to your dens."

"You and your pups are dogs, and this forest is full of dogs," the oldest wolf said, and the pack went away. 

Ben swallowed. His throat clicked. 

"Who told you this story?" the wizard asked. 

"I don't know," he said. "You really want to hear - ow."

"Does it actually hurt?" He'd wound one curl around his finger; he wasn't pulling hard. 

"Nah," Ben said. Tipped his head further back, pushing into the wizard's hands. 

"Don't lie to me," he said, mildly. "I want to know when I'm hurting you. Who told you this story?"

"I was a kid, I've always known it," Ben said. 

The moon finally came to the wolf and her woman, and she said This Cannot Go On.

The woman dropped to her knees after she screamed, because the Moon is terrifying and beautiful and not meant to be seen by women of men. 

"We are no dogs," the wolf said. "This is my woman, and my pups are her pups: she belongs to me and is mine."

"Is this so?" the moon asked the woman. 

"Ah fuck me," the woman said, from where she'd curled up in the warm summer bracken. "Yeah, I'm hers."

"She's ours, she's ours," the pups yelled, and one of them tackled the moon to the ground, laughing with joy. 

"Woman, you cannot live like a man in this forest," the moon said. "It ain't right, and you will sicken and die, and the forest will sicken around you." 

"I don't got anywhere else to go," the woman said. 

"And I have a claim to her," the wolf said, and this time her teeth showed. 

"My daughter," the moon sighed. "As you will: if no men can claim her, let it be so. She is your hunt and your kill, so finish it." 

"_What_now?" The woman asked, and managed to stumble into a crouch, ready to run. 

"Don't be an idiot," the wolf told her. "The moon watches over women and wolves. It'll be all right in the end."

"Great," the woman said. "I didn't - I didn't think. Ahhhh, fuck. It's been a good run. And I will go to my kin when I die, but I will remember you, wolf." And she knelt and tangled her fingers in the thick moss, and lifted her head. 

The wolf tore her throat in one bite. 

"Keep breathing," the moon told the woman. "This magic needs air and blood and moon. "

So the woman managed a few struggling breaths, and the wolf and the pups licked the blood and the tears from the woman's face and neck. 

The moon turned her back, and the forest went black and grey: when she looked at the family again, the woman had turned into a wolf bitch with a tawny gold coat the color of her hair. 

"Ahhh," the wolf said. "_Now_ I will tell you my name. You have been mine, woman, but now i can be yours, because I ain't a damn dog. Our children will grow strong and tall." 

"Mother of fuck," the wolf who'd been a woman yelped, and fell over her own legs. "Where'd she come from? She's amazing and I love her!"

"That's the moon," the biggest cub told her, and licked at her jaws lovingly. "She always looks like that, men can't see her."

"You are so little you've never seen a man," her mother said. 

"YOU!" The woman shouted, and tackled the wolf. "I knew you before but now I _know_ you!"

"Have a care," the moon told them, but her voice was full of love. "Listen to me, Youngest of All My Daughters: my magic is only so strong. You won't be a wolf forever; you will still owe the sun some days of your life, but now that your wife the wolf has taken the life she was owed, I can give you the shape of a wolf and you will thrive in my forest."

"Holy fuck, you've saved me!" Youngest of All Her Daughters yelped. The wolf who loved her pushed against her shoulder, hard, and said "and now it's a full moon; come with us and hunt with us, and lie with me in the day. Some days you must still be a woman, but my pack will know you always, and your children and my children will be kin always, even your dead children and the children to come."

"Not so fast," the moon said. "Bravest and strangest of my daughters, if you spend all your life with a woman, you'll be a dog with a pack of dogs before you die."

The wolf bent her muzzle to the earth, for this broke her damn heart, but the Youngest Of All Her Daughters (who was no longer quite a woman or a wolf) squinted at the moon, suspiciously. "I don't have to rip anyone's throat out, do I?" 

"No," the moon said, and sighed. "No, my love, you've made your sacrifice, and it was done bravely; now your wolf must give up the pack, and be sworn to you, and live some days of her life as a woman."

"Hate that idea," the wolf said. "Men are loud and stupid and nose-blind - no offense - and the pack is what keeps you alive."

"Some offense," Youngest Of All Her Daughters said. 

"I have already driven my pack away," the wolf said, ignoring her partner: "if that's not enough, then tell me what the hell is."

"You needed to say it, as men do," the moon said. "And do your cubs agree? - for they could leave, and join their own packs."

"No," said her cubs; "no no no, our mothers are our mothers, and we will join with them." 

"Then you will take the bodies of men, sometimes," the moon said. "And because you have two bodies, have twice the soul to fill them; know your faces, and your names, and be your own kind, neither men nor wolves, but know that you are my children always."

"And that's why we have werewolves," Ben said. He smiled. He looked purely, simply happy - at least until he decided the wizard was looking at him strangely. 

"I've never heard that story before," the wizard said, because it seemed better than scaring the kid by asking what kind of godforsaken flea-bitten story about bestiality that had been. "Where's it from?" 

"I just grew up hearing it," Ben said, uneasily. "It's the happiest story I know. It's why we've got whole souls, and monkeys - men - only got half of one." 

"You trust your lady Sarai," the wizard said, slowly. "Even though she is a witch, and a woman, and logically must also have only half a soul."


End file.
